


the quality of your intent

by QueenWithABeeThrone



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Blind Character, F/M, Secret Santa, daredevil fusion, diana is less of a human disaster than matt news at eleven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 16:25:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13217592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone
Summary: When Diana Prince was ten years old, she pushed an old man out of the way of an out-of-control truck.That was the last time she ever saw the sky, or her mother’s face.or: Diana Prince, Daredevil, meets Steve Trevor, secretary.





	the quality of your intent

**Author's Note:**

> title from a Thurgood Marshall quote: " _What is the quality of your intent?_ "
> 
> for [clarkegriffin](http://clarkegriffin.tumblr.com/). I hope you like your secret santa gift!

When Diana Prince was ten years old, she pushed an old man out of the way of an out-of-control truck.

That was the last time she ever saw the sky, or her mother’s face. Or—anything at all, really, because the thing about radioactive chemicals getting into your eyes is that you tend to go _blind_. Who knew, right?

The other thing about getting radioactive chemicals splashed in your eyes is that you get superpowers out of it too, but Diana’s pretty sure she’s a special case there. Lucky her, right?

She crouches down on a rooftop, cocks her head, and _listens_ —here, an argument between lovers, there, a barking dog, and _there_ —

Weeping. _Please, let me go, I swear I’ll do anything, please please please_ —

Diana jumps off the rooftop.

\--

_Etta. Etta. Etta._

Diana groans into her pillow. She’s tempted to just reach out and turn her phone off so she can get some sleep, but instead she pushes herself up to a more vertical position, fumbles around for her phone. It always takes a minute for her senses to recalibrate after some sleep, so she winces from the noise of the city flooding in before she swipes her thumb across the screen.

“Rise and shine, Diana!” Etta’s voice chirps over the phone. Diana winces again—she loves Etta, she does, but she’s just woken up too.

“Talk softly,” she says. “I only just woke up.”

“Oh, right,” says Etta, her voice lower now. “Sorry about that. But I have _very_ good reasons for being excited—we have an office now!” Diana can’t hear her pumping her fist in the air over the phone, but she can imagine it, anyway, sort of. The mental image makes her smile to herself. “A very lovely office already furnished with chairs— _not_ the squeaky, spinning kind—and tables and even a cabinet. Not much else but, can you imagine! Our very own office!”

“That’s good,” says Diana, “that’s _great_. But, uh, is there rooftop access?”

“Of course there’s rooftop access,” says Etta. “Six years we’ve known each other and you still think you need to ask? I am offended.”

“I’ll take that in mind the next time you ask me if I want shrimp dumplings,” says Diana. “Six years we’ve known each other—”

“All right, all right, I get it,” laughs Etta, over the phone. “Oh, by the way, I heard about—last night. Are you all right, by any chance?”

Diana breathes in, then out. Her ribs don’t hurt, that’s good, though there’s a bruise on her torso that smarts something fierce. “I’ll live,” she says.

“I can meet the real estate agent myself if I have to,” says Etta. “Or we can reschedule it. Or—”

“No, no, I can make it there, Etta,” says Diana. “You can start without me, though. I have an ice pack to apply.”

“No concussions?” Etta asks. “No wobbly feeling like you’re going to fall?”

“I appreciate the concern,” says Diana, getting to her feet as her world on fire resolves into a much clearer mental picture, “but I’m only bruised. Last night’s activities were productive, to say the least.” A human trafficker’s going to be spending a very long time in jail, what’s not to like?

“Well, you know how I worry,” says Etta. “Right, I need to go, I have to go bribe a cop with a box of donuts. Do you want any? I can spare some.”

Diana laughs, grips on to her doorway to steady herself. “Etta!” she chides. “That’s not legal. I expected better out of a lawyer like you.”

“I was only joking, NSA,” Etta says, “but—yes. I need to bribe a cop. If you don’t want any donuts, I shall keep half for myself.” With an audible chuckle, she hangs up.

Diana shakes her head with a laugh, then walks into her kitchen, fingers trailing over her things as she goes. She doesn’t _need_ to do it, per se, she’s already memorized the layout to her place and she keeps everything in its proper place with a near-military precision, but. Well. She likes the feeling of it, of her couch’s soft upholstery contrasting with the hard, cold marble of her kitchen counter.

She sniffs the air, wrinkles her nose. The milk’s gone bad, which is a shame, she’ll have to buy some more. She’ll have to contend with bitter coffee, until then.

She sighs, then opens a cupboard and starts making breakfast.

\--

Etta’s already in the office by the time Diana gets there, along with the real estate agent. She can tell because of the familiar heartbeat a floor up, paired with an unfamiliar one, and the faint scent of sweet cakes that filters out through the door once she climbs a flight of stairs.

She cocks her head to the side when she reaches the door, trying to make out the conversation. Oh, yes, Etta’s grilling the agent a little, talking about how they’re getting _pre-_ Incident prices for a little office in the midst of Hell’s Kitchen, and the agent is talking about getting a killer view of the city being worth every cent.

She steps inside and says, “I’ll let her have the view.”

The woman’s breath hitches in her throat, blood rushing to her cheeks. “Oh,” she says, lamely. “I am— _so_ sorry.” Her skirt rustles, the toe of her shoe scraping lightly against the wooden floor.

“She just curtsied,” Etta supplies. “Rather cute.”

“Thanks, I try,” says the agent.

Diana huffs out a laugh, and holds out her hand. “Can you give me a tour of our prospective new office?” she asks.

“Certainly!” the agent says, and thus Diana’s treated to a spiel about the office’s _modern character_ and style as the agent walks her through the office.

“If this is what’s considered modern,” Etta murmurs under her breath just a few steps behind, for only to Diana to catch, “then I’d hate to see what counts as _ancient._ ”

Diana smiles.

\--

She calls her mother, after they get the office. Etta’s pretty much kicked her out for the moment to fuss over the appearance, and Diana knows when she’d only hinder her friend in her work, so she steps out and walks down the street to a particularly fragrant-smelling bakery.

When she’s bought bagels for Etta and croissants for herself, she pulls her phone out and dials her mother’s number.

“Oh, Diana,” says Hippolyta, her voice slurred with sleep. Diana wonders, suddenly, what time it must be in Themyscira, in her mother’s home. “I didn’t expect you to call so soon after the last one.”

“We have an office, Mother,” she says, unable to stop herself from smiling. “Me and Etta. We’ve _made_ it!”

“What?” says Hippolyta. “Wait—my gods, you have an office? You have an _office_!”

“I know!” says Diana. “Is Antiope there? I must tell her—”

“Antiope’s with Menalippe, right now,” says Hippolyta, “but I’ll pass on the good news when I see her.” She hears an audible sniffle over the phone. “My daughter, my greatest love and my greatest joy—you do me proud, Diana. I am so _proud_.”

“We don’t have any clients yet,” says Diana, “and Etta’s hounding me about changing our policy, but we have an office!”

“It’s a grand start,” says Hippolyta. “Though, about your policy, Diana—I must agree with Etta. Men are easily corrupted, if you wait for innocent souls to come stumbling through your doors, you’ll be waiting a very long time.”

“At this point, Mother,” Diana sighs, “I’d settle for just one.”

\--

The call comes in at midnight, after they’ve moved the rest of their things into the office—Etta’s books, Diana’s Braille equipment, their files and cabinets and secret stashes of junk foods sealed in four layers of plastic to keep the rats out.

Diana’s carefully setting up her equipment when Etta’s phone goes off in her bag. She waits thirty seconds before she sighs and walks over to the doorway, rapping her knuckles against the wooden frame to catch Etta’s attention.

“Your phone’s ringing,” she says.

“Oh!” says Etta, diving for her bag and yanking her phone out. Diana goes back to setting up her equipment, but she keeps an ear on Etta’s conversation as she does so. “Joan, hel _lo_. What do you have for me?”

Joan Dale’s voice says, “Nothing but contempt for your career, Etta.”

“Oh, thank you,” says Etta, dryly. “But other than that?”

“A case,” says Dale. Diana tilts her head to hear her better. “Open and shut, but he demanded a lawyer and I figured, well, hell. You two are desperate for clients.”

“Cut to the chase, Joan,” says Etta.

“He’s the only murder suspect found at a crime scene with a knife in his hands and blood all over him,” says Joan. “Like to see you defend that.”

Etta sighs. “You wound me,” she says. “I got you donuts!”

“You ate _half_ ,” says Joan, as Diana stands up and wanders out of her office, deftly stepping around the desk. “Listen, you wanted a case. I’m throwing you one: murder suspect, male, found at the crime scene with blood on his hands and still insists he isn’t guilty. You guys had better get down here before the public defender does, because trust me, Circe’s liable to botch the defense on principle, she thinks he’s guilty already. You two, on the other hand, I know would _try_.”

“All right,” says Etta. Her hair brushes against her collar—she’s looking up at Diana, though Diana doesn’t know what the look on her face must be like. “What’s his name?”

“Steve,” says Dale. “Steve Trevor.”

\--

They cuff Steve to a table to wait on a couple of lawyers, because a murder suspect who’s having a long, slow emotional breakdown is clearly a danger to the good ol’ boys in blue.

Which is—fine, he’s fine with it, he really is. He can wait. He won’t tug at his cuffs every so often, anxiety digging its claws into his gut and twisting it about until all he can think of is _oh god I’m fucked oh god people are going to lose their homes oh god_.

He reaches up, absently, to run a hand through his hair, comes up short. His hand drops to the table, and he shuts his eyes and breathes, _one two three, one two three._

The only consolation he has is that the drive is somewhere safe, where no one will think to find it. Especially not Ludendorff and Maru’s goons, especially not—whoever this _Ares_ is. Who calls themselves after the Greek god of war anyway?

He hears footsteps, first, something tapping against the floor. Then the cop opens the door, and Steve’s breathing stops for a moment.

Just behind the cop is an angel in a dark suit and dark red sunglasses, a cane in her hand. She reaches out a hand, fingers catching on the edge of the table, then the back rest of the chair, as her redheaded companion hurries in after her.

“Now what,” says the redhead, “is our client doing in handcuffs?”

_Our client._

“Get them off,” says the angel, her voice stern. She pulls the chairs out.

“With all due respect—” starts the cop.

“He’s stick-thin and clearly exhausted,” the redhead snaps, “get the cuffs _off_.”

The cop’s jaw tenses, but he complies anyway, roughly grabbing hold of Steve’s wrist and unlocking the handcuffs. The _click_ of them unlocking is maybe the most beautiful sound he’s heard all night, besides the angel’s voice.

“Your funeral,” says the cop, stepping out.

“Can we sit down?” says the angel, cocking her head towards Steve. “It’s been a rather trying day.”

Steve shrugs, a little. Then he remembers— _she’s blind._

As if to remind him, the redhead says, “He just shrugged vaguely. Let’s take it as a _yes_ , my feet are killing me.”

The two lawyers sit, almost in sync, and the redhead fusses with her bag, yanks a pen and a pad of paper out. “Mr. Steve Trevor?” she says. “I’m Etta Candy. This is Diana Prince.”

“We’re here to help,” says Diana Prince.

Steve could almost believe that. Could almost _trust_ that. But his life before coming to New York by way of a broken-down car has taught him better to simply trust two lawyers coming in to save him, so instead he says, “Who sent you?”

“No one sent us, Mr. Trevor,” says Prince. “We came here of our own volition, after someone told us of your plight.”

“I bribed the desk sergeant with a box of donuts,” says Candy.

“We are always on the lookout for new clients who may be in need of our help,” says Prince, her enigmatic smile turning a little more fixed. “And, Etta, you really need to stop giving Joan _donuts_.”

“It’s a free country,” says Candy, with a huff. “If she wants to cheat on her diet then it’s not as if either of us can stop her. Besides, donuts are _good_ for her.”

“And you wonder why she doesn’t like you very much,” Prince says.

Steve glances between them, dread a heavy weight in his stomach. He hasn’t had many opportunities to talk with lawyers in the past, but something about how Prince and Candy talk to each other, about how Candy’s suit is a little more rumpled than Prince’s—

“How long have you been at this?” he asks.

Prince coughs, her hand going to her wrist, feeling something under her sleeve. “What time is it?” she asks Candy.

Candy tugs her sleeve back and glances down. “It’s—12:42 AM,” she says.

“Seven hours,” says Prince.

“Is this from when we moved our things in?” says Candy.

“Yes,” says Prince.

“Seven hours!” Candy chirps, her smile fixed. “My, how time flies, doesn’t it?”

Steve opens his mouth. Closes it. Wonders, distantly, if someone’s gone and yanked the floor out from under him while he was trying to get his bearings. “You’ve never done this before?” he asks.

Prince smiles. “If you were to hire us,” she says, “you would be our first client, yes.”

Oh, god.

“I don’t have any money,” he starts.

“It was wonderful to meet you,” says Candy, starting to stand, and the plea is on Steve’s lips, _please don’t leave me here I need your help_ , before Prince grabs hold of her partner’s sleeve and pulls her back down.

“We don’t have any clients, you don’t have any money,” says Prince, cocking her head to the side as Candy sits back down. “Maybe we can help each other out.”

“Joy,” mutters Candy.

“Deal,” says Steve. “I—really want out of here. There’s a—” He stops, glances around and spies a camera in the corner, trained on them. “I can’t talk about it here,” he says. “But what I can tell you is, I didn’t do it. _I swear._ ”

“Going to be a little hard to convince people of that,” says Candy, “seeing as you were found at the scene of the crime covered in the victim’s blood.”

He winces, a little. All right, that’s true. But he knows—he didn’t do it.

“Tom is— _was_ my friend,” he says, leaning forward, trying to keep his voice even and calm, despite the tears stinging at his eyes. “I asked him for help on—on something I found, where we worked. He said yes. We met up for drinks, at No Man’s Land, and the last thing I remember we were just having drinks and shooting the shit. Next thing I know I’m waking up and he’s—”

_Dead._

Steve swallows the lump in his throat. “I’m covered in his blood,” he says, instead.

“Really?” says Candy, raising a brow.

“I know how that sounds,” says Steve, desperate, “but you have to believe me, that’s all I can remember. And I know, I _know_ I didn’t do it, I can’t have, he was—he was going to _help me_ , why would I kill him? He was my _friend_ , you have to believe me, Miss Candy, Miss Prince, please—”

“I believe you,” says Prince, and sheer giddy relief crashes back down on Steve, then and there. “We can’t get you out of here, as of yet,” she continues, which deflates his hopes a little, “since you’re currently the murder suspect in an ongoing investigation, but we _can_ ensure that the process goes as smoothly as possible. Right, Etta?”

“Right,” says Candy, sighing. “Well, I mean. Big guy like you, Mr. Trevor? You’ll be fine.”

\--

On their way back to the office, Etta turns to Diana and says, “This won’t turn out like your girlfriend in college, right?”

Diana arches a brow, her cane tapping along the asphalt. Etta tugs slightly on her arm, and the two of them turn a corner. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says.

“You are a very bad liar,” Etta says, “for someone with a secret identity.”

Diana sighs. “Veronica was—a very long time ago,” she says. “I’m surprised you still remember her. I’ve had other relationships, after all.”

“She _broke your heart_ , of course I remember her,” says Etta, highly offended. “That stuck-up little—”

“Etta,” says Diana, warningly.

“Sorry,” says Etta. “But—well, listen. I have been your friend for long enough that I’ve noticed a pattern with all your special friends.”

“There’s a pattern?” Diana asks. She’s not that predictable, surely, at least not in who she falls in love with. The only thing she can think of that they all have in common is that they have particularly pleasing voices.

Steve had a nice voice, while they were talking. A nice voice, and a steady heartbeat.

“Oh, yes,” says Etta. “They’re all _hot_ , for one thing—and I don’t know how you do it, I truly don’t, considering you have no way of knowing—”

“Not true,” says Diana, teasing. “I have you. That’s how I know they’re hot.”

“True,” Etta chirps, and Diana just knows she’s grinning up at her now, “I have _excellent_ judgment in that department.” She sobers up, and says, “And, for another, they’re all a little—hm, how to put this delicately?”

“Don’t,” says Diana.

“All right, blunt way it is: you have a thing for the bad boys,” says Etta. “And bad girls.”

“They’re not _bad_ ,” Diana says, trying to rein in a laugh. “I’ll accept slightly morally questionable—”

“ _Slightly,_ she says, like Selina wasn’t absolutely a cat burglar on the side,” huffs Etta. “I’m just saying! Steve seems right up your alley, and while typically I would encourage you to bang that like a screen door in a hurricane, as your partner, I advise that you hold off on that.” She sucks in a breath, and Diana can hear her teeth sliding lightly against each other. “There’s something he hasn’t told us.”

“I know,” says Diana.

“Is this your heartbeat thing?” Etta asks.

“Something like that,” says Diana, “but he is telling the truth. He didn’t do it.”

“Or he believes he didn’t,” says Etta. “Someone might’ve slipped something in his drink. It’s happened before.”

Diana shakes her head. “It’s not happening here,” she says. “He didn’t do it. I’m certain of that.”

“But he’s hiding something,” says Etta. “Do you have any idea what?”

“Contrary to what you might think,” says Diana, “super-senses aren’t always that beneficial. _No_ , I don’t know what he’s hiding, but whatever it is, someone deemed it worth killing a man and framing another one over.”

“So you think it’s a frame-up?” says Etta.

“I _know_ it’s a frame-up,” says Diana. “I just don’t know why, and I mean to find out.”

“The punchy way or the legal way?” Etta asks. “Oh, open manhole.”

Diana steps to the side, wrinkling up her nose at the foul smell of shit and sewage. “The legal way first,” she says. “The punchy way—it might harm more than help this case, right now.”

“Does this mean you’ll actually sleep for the night?” says Etta.

“I didn’t say I wasn’t going out,” says Diana.

Etta clucks her tongue, says, “Try not to get _too_ bruised up, all right? Makeup can only do so much.”

\--

The next time Diana and Etta meet Steve Trevor, there’s a bruise around his throat where a guard tried to strangle him. Diana knows, because Etta jumps a little beside her and says, “Oh, Steve’s here—he definitely looks much worse than when we last saw him.”

“How much worse?” says Diana.

“There’s a bruise ‘round his neck,” says Etta.

Diana’s jaw clenches, her hands tightening around the handle of her cane. Etta bumps her elbow, companionable, and she forces herself to relax—Steve’s heartbeat is still steady, if a little elevated from fear. He’s all right. He’s fine.

The first thing Steve says to them is, “Can I sue them?”

“You absolutely could!” chirps Etta, in a voice loud enough that Diana winces a little. All around them, twenty heartbeats speed up. “A police officer tried to strangle you in your cell, that’s already grounds for a civil suit.”

“Yeah, good to know the option’s there,” says Steve. “But I just—can I get out of here?”

“We can take you to our office,” says Diana, standing up. “It’s a little far from here, though.”

“Right now,” says Steve, “I’d like to be as far away from here as I can get.” He scratches lightly at the back of his head, and says, “And—far from my apartment, too.”

“Then the office is perfect,” says Diana, holding her hand out. “May I?”

“He just blinked at you,” says Etta, after a moment passes.

“Oh, right, that,” says Steve, and he takes her arm, hand fitting in the crook of her elbow like it’s always belonged there. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right,” says Diana. “The number of times Etta did it, when we were in college—”

“Di!” says Etta, her voice flustered. Diana grins, and they set off.

Diana cocks her head as they pass through the precinct, listening for any suspicious conversations. Nothing reaches her ears, though, so for now she returns her focus to Etta, chattering cheerfully away about the tea from the financial office being so much better than theirs, and to Steve, his heartbeat now much more relaxed.

She’s—grateful, for that. She hasn’t exactly known Steve for very long, but he seems, at least, innocent of the crime he’s been accused of. He must know something, though, otherwise why the frame-up? Why the attempt on his life? Why all these lengths, if he doesn’t?

“Oh, careful, there’s a puddle,” Etta’s voice cuts in. Diana’s cane cuts through the puddle, water splashing against the pavement. “Diana, do we have any tea in the office? And don’t be cute with me and tell me the powdered swill you like to drink counts as tea.”

“If it tastes like tea, it’s tea,” says Diana.

“It’s _cold_ ,” says Etta, truly offended.

“Now you’re just being finicky,” says Diana.

Etta huffs out a breath. Steve, beside Diana, gives a quiet little noise—Etta must’ve nudged his side. “Steve, come on, back me up here,” says Etta, whispering. Diana knows for a fact that Etta’s well aware of Diana’s heightened senses, of how she can hear her whispering even from rooms away.

“I don’t really—I don’t really drink tea that much,” Steve says. “I tried, it just tasted wrong.”

“I am surrounded by heathens and plebeians,” says Etta, despairing. “I never should’ve settled in America.”

“You’d be a butcher in Greenwich if you didn’t fly out here,” Diana says.

“A butcher?” says Steve, incredulous.

“Yes, a butcher called Candy, go on, laugh,” says Etta. “They even made a pun out of it! _Candied Meats_ , lord. I told my mother, _no_ , I am not working in an establishment with a pun on my name, I have much more dignity than that…”

Diana shifts a little bit closer to Steve, as Etta talks. It’s easy enough, to focus on his heartbeat in her ears, the sound of it like a steady drumbeat. _Thud-thud, thud-thud, thud-thud._

His hand is warm on the inside of her elbow. She wonders how it would feel against her cheek.

\--

The offices of Candy & Prince are almost hilariously shabby. Then again, what did Steve expect? Their firm is so new that they haven’t even established a name yet, they’re resorting to bribing cops with donuts to get cases thrown their way. They don’t even have a desk, there’s just a plastic table in the middle of the room with a flimsy card taped to the edge, reading _RECEPTIONIST’S DESK_.

There’s a label in Braille taped underneath the handwritten sign. At least the place is somewhat more accessible than others.

“Sit, sit,” says Etta, fussing over Steve like he’s a kid. It’s weird, having someone around his age maneuver him to a plastic chair, but he doesn’t complain too much beyond a token protest. “I’ll go see if the financial office downstairs has any real tea.” She points at Diana. “Don’t do the thing!” she tells her.

Diana arches an exquisite eyebrow. “Are you pointing at me?” she says. “I have a feeling you’re pointing at me.”

“Damn right, I’m pointing at you,” says Etta. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” She hurries out of the room, muttering all the way, and the door shuts behind her.

Diana drapes a blanket over Steve’s shoulders and sits down across from him, looking at him. Or—no, she’s not actually looking at him, she’s blind. He has to remember that. “Do you want to tell me what happened in your cell?” she asks.

“Off the books or on the record?” says Steve.

“It’s your call,” says Diana. “You’re the client.”

“What if I don’t know if I can tell you?” says Steve.

“Why not?”

Tom’s body, for one thing. The feeling of his blood, slick in Steve’s hands. The bedsheet wrapped around his neck, growing tighter and tighter.

Steve breathes out, draws the blanket tighter around himself. “I know you and Miss Candy want to help,” he says. “But this thing, the people I used to work for—they’re ruthless. They killed Tom, and they tried to frame me for his death. They tried to have me killed in my _cell_. I just—if anyone else dies because of me, I don’t know if I’ll be able to take having that on my conscience.”

“Listen to me,” says Diana, full of conviction. She reaches out her hand, rests it on his knee first before she finds his hand. “Your friend’s death is not your fault. The attempt on your life is not your fault. The fault lies with those who arranged for both these things to happen, not with you.” She strokes along his thumb, a smile touching her mouth. “And Etta and I happen to be very good at taking care of ourselves, Mr. Trevor.”

Steve finds himself smiling a little, despite the phantom weight of Tom’s body still weighing heavy on his heart. He can trust her, he knows—he knew from the moment she said _I believe you_.

He breathes out, and says, “I want it on the record.”

Diana nods, and says, “All right. We’ll wait for Etta, and in the meantime, you need to know: until this case is over, you can’t speak to anyone else besides myself and Etta about what happened. The less who know, the better.”

He can’t argue with that. The less people who know what he’s keeping, the less targets Ludendorff and Maru have. “I don’t really have anyone else to talk to, anyway,” he says. “Anyone else I could’ve talked to is out of town or out of the country.”

“Do you need to call them?” says Diana. “Let them know you’re all right, at least? They must be worried, and you can do that much.”

God, he wants to. But there’s a target on his head, and Tom is already dead because of him, so he shakes his head. “I’ll call them after the case is done,” he says. “I’m not—I can’t drag them into this. I call them, I risk putting targets on them.”

“Do you know who’s doing the targeting?” says Diana.

“I’ve got an idea,” says Steve. “I don’t have any real evidence to back it up, but I know who, and I know _why_.”

\--

They start when Etta comes back, bearing a cup of tea and apologizing for the lack of milk, and Diana mostly stays out of the way while her partner busies herself with prepping the conference room for their meeting.

All she needs to do is sit down, press a button, and ask the first question, and Steve starts to talk: he’d worked for the financial department of Union Allied, as the secretary to its head officer. One of the things they did was overseeing the government contracts of the company, as well as managing the funds for a variety of projects. Steve, as the secretary, was one of the people who were meant to check over the funds to correct mistakes and make sure there wasn’t any misappropriation. One of these funds was the pension fund.

“I got this file in my e-mail one day, and all the subject line said was _Pension Master_ ,” he says. “It wasn’t meant for me, that much was pretty obvious, but I’ve always been kinda curious, so I figured the boss wouldn’t mind if I took a look at it, just to see if everything was in order.”

“I’m going to take a wild guess,” says Etta, “and say it was very much not in order.”

“You guess right,” says Steve, his breathing shaky. He runs a hand through his hair, blunt fingernails briefly and lightly scraping against his scalp. “I couldn’t believe the size of it, the numbers. There was—There was so much money, coming in and going out, and I didn’t know what to make of it. At first I figured it might’ve been a theoretical model or something, but that didn’t explain all the—the shifting numbers. And I started to wonder, if it was just a theoretical model, why designate it as part of the company pension?”

“Unless,” says Diana, anger bubbling within her throat, “they were trying to hide it.”

“Exactly,” says Steve. “I thought, hell, maybe it was just my boss trying to shave a little something off the top of the pension funds, but the numbers were too big, the money was too much, to just be going towards him. If all of that money was going anywhere, it was to a—a _lot_ of anywheres. And I was starting to think I knew a few places it was going.”

“So how does your friend Tom figure into this?” says Diana, reining in her anger. There’ll be time to let it out, but not here, not now.

And so, he goes on to tell them, he’d gone to his friend Tom in the legal department, and showed him the file and told the whole sorry story. They’d agreed to go for a few drinks, to talk it out and look over what had happened. Maybe, he had thought, they would even be able to find evidence to bring against the people he suspected were lining their pockets with money meant for the pension fund.

“I remember having one drink, and then everything just—blurs,” says Steve, his heartbeat holding steady all the way. “And then the next thing I know, Tom is—is _dead_ and I’m the one covered in his blood.”

His breath hitches, when he says _dead_.

Etta’s first to reach a hand out, her palm resting gently on Steve’s shoulder, rustling the blanket they’ve draped over him.

“He had a family,” says Steve, his voice breaking. “He had a _kid_ —”

He gets to his feet, unsteadily, the chair scraping noisily back. Diana’s almost out of her chair, but Etta’s faster, stepping in between Steve and the door.

“You need to stay _here_ ,” she stresses, and Steve sucks in a breath as if to argue. “If you’ve gotten it into your head that you can protect us by leaving somehow, might I remind you that you’d be putting _yourself_ at an unnecessary risk?”

“I can’t stay cooped up here forever while my case drags on,” Steve argues, heat in his voice borne out of some kind of urgency. Diana stands, her brow beginning to furrow. What could be so urgent that Steve would risk himself? “I need—I’ve gotta _do_ something.”

“Well, there’s nowhere else for you to go—” Etta starts.

“Not true,” Diana breaks in, almost brazenly. “He can stay with me. Just for the night, until we can figure something out.”

\--

Diana had gotten her apartment fairly cheap—a miracle in itself, considering the rising prices of apartments all over Hell’s Kitchen. The real estate agent hadn’t been wrong, when she’d told them that the neighborhood was bouncing back from the destruction the Incident had caused, Diana’s apartment hunt had been proof enough of that.

It’s well worth it, though, because the place is spacious enough for her needs and has rooftop access. She pushes the door open with some effort, and lets Steve step inside first.

“It’s a little dark in here,” says Steve, before he pauses and huffs out a breath. “Or, um—”

“I wouldn’t know,” says Diana, a little dryly, but light. She’s heard much worse from others, and at the very least Steve’s not half as crass as some of the people she’s met. “The light switch is on the left. There’s some take-out in the fridge, if you reheat it now it’ll be ready by the time I’ve fixed up the bedroom for you.”

“I can’t possibly throw you out of your own bedroom,” says Steve, alarm creeping into his tone as Diana steps into her bedroom. There’s not much to fix there, but she takes the outfit for her, ah, _night job_ from under the bed and stashes it into her closet. She pulls out her old ex’s shirt, for good measure. “I can just take the couch—”

His words trail off, as his shoes hit the soft carpet in the living room. Even from here, shutting her closet door, she can hear his surprised, “Oh.”

“I’ve never seen it myself,” Diana says, stepping out of the bedroom with a wry smile, “but I’m told the billboard across from the living room is, and I quote, _too damn bright to sleep next to_.” She shrugs. “On the bright side, it made the apartment a lot cheaper than it would be, otherwise.”

“Yeah, I can see why,” Steve mutters, scratching the back of his head. “Hey, uh—thanks. For letting me stay here, at least for the night. You’re sure it’s all right, though?”

Most likely not, especially since the man’s her client. “It’s all right by me,” she says, tossing him the shirt. “I know how to protect myself.”

Steve doesn’t say anything, but once he’s pulled his first shirt off and pulled her ex’s shirt on, she hears the wet smack of lips, the scratch of his nails against his scalp. He’s trying to think of something to say that won’t come across as offensive, so she adds, “My aunt taught me, after my accident.”

“Accident?” Steve asks, sitting down on the couch. Diana sits across from him, in one of her comfortable armchairs, and clasps her hands together on her knees. “Do you—Would it be prying if I asked about it?”

“No,” she says, “since I brought it up,” and she gives him a barebones sketch of what happened: the old man, the truck, the chemicals splashing in her face.

“Shit,” breathes Steve, afterwards, then, “Oh, sorry—”

“That’s the exact same reaction Etta had when I told her,” says Diana. “You’re already doing better than she was, though—she asked me if my eyes got knocked out.” It had been a truly awkward first meeting, but now that she’s years away from it, she can look back and chuckle to herself, at how they both were at first.

Steve laughs. It sounds like music to her ears. “I’ve got so many questions, honestly,” he says.

“How about this,” she proposes, “I’ll answer your questions if you answer mine. Is that fair to you?”

“You’re the lawyer,” says Steve, “but in my own very inexpert opinion, that does sound fair to me.”

She wants to ask him, straight off, where he’s kept the file. She’s certain he did, he’s smart enough to have worked out that it was more than the subject line said it was, as well as moral enough to decide to do something about it. But that would be too much, too soon, so instead she asks, “I’ll start: Why did you come to New York?”

“Heavy stuff first, huh,” says Steve, but there’s nothing heavy in his tone—quite the opposite, in fact. It’s light, and sweet. “I used to be a soldier. I quit after—after a while, and when I came back to Ohio I realized I couldn’t fit back in there the way I used to. So I just took a car and drove until the gas ran out. Twenty miles away from New York, funnily enough. I hitchhiked the rest of the way in. So I guess you could say I’m just here because I ran out of gas.” It’s not a lie, his heartbeat holds steady through his story, but Diana has learned not to let people’s heartbeats mislead her. There’s something, she’s sure, that he hasn’t said yet.

Then he asks her, “How do you comb your hair?”

She laughs. “I just hope for the best,” she says. “It works out well enough most of the time, I’ve found.” She drums her fingers against her knee. “What is Ohio like?”

“Not that interesting,” says Steve. “Your accent—where’d you pick it up?”

“I haven’t always lived in America,” says Diana. “My mother and my aunt, they raised me on an island nation named Themyscira—that’s where I got my accent. They came to New York when I was nine, a scant year before I was blinded, because of my mother’s work, and I spent most of my life living in New York and in Themyscira. I chose to settle in New York for good before college, because I knew I could do the most good out here instead of in Themyscira.” It had been necessary, as much as it hurt her to give up her life in Themyscira—the sirens of New York kept calling her, pleading for her to come help somehow.

Diana has never been able to stand idly by when people have needed her help, not since she was a girl.

“Your turn,” she says, steering away from that thought, “you said you didn’t fit back in Ohio anymore, after you came home from the war. What happened?”

Steve drums his fingers on the armrest of her couch. “There wasn’t much waiting for me there, anymore,” he says, at last. “It’s—It’s weird. All through that time skulking around ruined buildings, I kept dreaming of—of newspapers, and breakfasts. Growing old with this girl I knew, maybe having a family. But after I got back, I just—I realized I wasn’t the same, not anymore. So I left.”

“And ended up five hundred miles away,” says Diana.

“Little more than that, I took a few detours,” says Steve. “Do you—You don’t have to answer this, if you don’t want to, but do you miss it? Seeing? Do you still remember what it was like?”

Diana breathes out. She can’t say that she _misses_ it, per se. Her senses have more than compensated for the lack of sight, in most cases—certainly she’s as lost as any other blind person when dealing with laminated menus, but otherwise she has an advantage over almost anyone else, blind or sighted. And for all her own troubles, she’s made her way through, and she wouldn’t trade her life for any other, blindness and overpowered senses and all.

She says, “I was ten, of course I remember. It isn’t perfect, but I do remember.” She takes her glasses off, looks at Steve—or where she’s sure Steve is, anyway. “There’s this thing I was told in trauma recovery, after the accident: you could mourn what you lost, or you could pick yourself up off the ground, and define yourself by what you have, making no apologies for what you lack. My aunt was very keen on drumming that into my head.” In truth Antiope had adjusted her training to help her hone her senses, and fight even in spite of what had happened. _Your eyes may not work, but your other senses do, and they can work just as well as sight can in a fight,_ she had said.

“Your aunt sounds cool,” says Steve, real admiration in his voice. Diana grins. She’ll have to tell Antiope later, she’s certain her aunt will be pleased by the praise.

“She is,” Diana agrees. “I don’t _miss_ it very much, anymore. Sometimes, yes, when I’m inconvenienced, but otherwise?” She shrugs. “I’ve been blind longer than I was sighted, and I do happen to like what I’ve made of my life.” Then she pauses, and breathes slowly out. “But sometimes I think—I’d give anything, to see my mother’s face again.”

“Yeah,” says Steve, softly, his voice a vulnerable, broken thing. “Me too.”

Her turn now, and she breathes out. “Here’s what I don’t understand,” she says, standing up and slipping her glasses back on, her mind spinning now with theories. “Pretend that I’m the man in charge of the pension funds. One of my secretaries discovers I’ve been misusing the funds, and he’s decided to do the moral thing and tell someone what I’ve been up to. I don’t feel like spending a single night in jail, so I decide to take action.” She turns to Steve, listening to the steady beat of his heart, and says, “So why don’t I kill you?”

“You tried,” says Steve, with a shrug.

“On the second try,” says Diana. “After Etta and I came to talk to you. They were trying their earnest to sweep everything under the rug then. The first time, though, they tried to frame you. To _discredit_ you.”

His heart beats faster out of fear, a frantic drumbeat in Diana’s ears. “And?”

“I can’t help but wonder,” says Diana, “if that means you have something they want. Something you want someone to look at—you almost mentioned it to me and Etta, at the precinct. So I wonder: did you keep the file, Steve?”

Steve’s silent for a long moment. Then he says, “Yes.”

“Where is it?” she asks.

“My place,” he says. “Somewhere safe. Or somewhere I thought was safe, until someone killed Tom in my apartment.” He huffs out a breath, scrubs his hand over his face. “I have to go get that drive back, before they find it. And it’s only a matter of time until they do.”

“Who are they?” she asks.

“That,” says Steve, “is something I can’t tell you about. Not without sufficient information.” Strange, she thinks. He talks like a spy. “But I can tell you that pissing them off is usually the last thing most people under their employ do.”

“Then I suppose,” says Diana, “that it’s a good thing you’ll be staying here the night, then?”

Steve’s heartbeat jumps in a lie when he says, “Yes.”

\--

Steve slips out of Diana’s apartment in the night, taking a hoodie and a pair of shoes with him.

He doesn’t particularly want to lie to her, doesn’t even want to be out here in the rain getting soaked through to the bone, but he has to—he has to make sure the drive’s still there. And then find a better hiding place to stash it than his apartment, on top of that. He wonders if Chief’s willing to dig up a little hidey-hole to stash it in.

He slips into his apartment, quiet as a mouse. All that military training was good for something after all, he supposes, though it’s been long enough since he last really kept up a regimen of any kind that he’d managed to nearly get strangled by a police officer in his sleep. Whoopee.

He looks around, briefly, presses himself flat against the wall out of habit. His hand drifts to his waist, fingers closing around empty air instead of the handle of a gun. Right. He hasn’t been carrying in a while.

He tries not to look at the bloodstain on his carpet, as he heads into the bathroom. The loose vent hasn’t been tampered with in any way, and—yes, _there_ it is, there’s the drive he was looking for. He stashes it into his pocket, and clambers off the toilet seat, relief crashing down on his shoulders—

—there’s someone in his apartment. Shit, and here he’d _just_ switched to an electric razor. He fumbles around for something to use as a bludgeon, finds a still-full bottle of shampoo. It’s a shitty bludgeon, but it’ll have to do.

He steps out of the bathroom, meets the man’s gaze.

The first thing he thinks, when the knife sinks into the shampoo bottle instead of his flesh, is, _Shit, I hadn’t even opened this one yet._ The second is _oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck._ He’s a little more out of practice than he really should be, and this guy’s apparently done this before—hell, Steve’d bet good money this is the same guy who killed Tom and framed him, and that pisses him off enough to fight back.

That, and the fact that he _felt_ the guy sneak the drive out of his pocket, and that’s not going to happen, not on his watch.

They break the tacky vase he bought at a flea market. Then the guy grabs the _other_ tacky vase, this one a gift from Sameer, and breaks it over Steve’s head, sending him stunned and sprawling to the ground.

He tries to push himself up off the ground to fight back, but everything is spinning dangerously, and the guy’s still advancing.

Oh, god.

Oh, god, he’s going to _die_.

Then the door swings open, and a woman in a black mask charges forward.

She fights, Steve dazedly thinks, with _grace_. She fights like she’s been trained for this, like a boxer and a capoeira dancer all in one. She—fuck, she _flips_ off the wall, he’s pretty sure she’s showing off. The two of them, the masked woman and the man with the knife, brawl throughout Steve’s apartment, struggling for the knife, and all the while Steve is just trying to muster enough strength to get up. He staggers to his feet, just as the woman and the man tumble out of the window.

He takes stock of his injuries, first. Yeah, that’s—ow, _shit_ , that’s a broken rib all right, and the guy’d gotten a few good swipes in too. Jesus, he has no idea how he’s going to explain this to Diana. Oh, hell. He can imagine her face now, the furrow between her brows, and Etta’s too.

But the woman in the mask needs his help, so he starts for the stairs. He doesn’t—He doesn’t get too far, has to rest for a minute because _ow_ stab wounds. Stab wounds hurt. So do broken ribs.

He groans, taking a minute. Then he sucks in a breath and walks down the damn stairs.

When he gets there, though, the guy with the knife is a bit chained up—he’s dangling by his knife hand from a chain, and the woman is mid-spin. He watches, stunned, as she kicks the man in the face, and then hits the ground herself. She groans, slowly getting to her feet, before patting the man down as if looking for something. Then she tugs the drive out of the man’s back pocket.

She’s soaked through when she turns to him, and says, “Is this yours?”

“Yeah,” says Steve, stunned. He doesn’t even know what she looks like under the mask and he’s pretty sure he could kiss her, anyway, the adrenaline rush is making him that giddy.

Wait.

Hasn’t he—Hasn’t he heard that accent before?

“You’re—” he starts, a little stunned.

The woman— _Diana_ —tilts her head. “Yes,” she says, turning to walk away. “We need to get this into the right hands.”

“You can’t take it to the police!” he calls after her. “You can’t trust them! You can’t trust anyone!”

“Then we tell everyone,” says Diana, and he swears, he _swears_ , that when she turns back to him, she’s grinning.

\--

“So I know it isn’t much in the way of repayment,” says Steve, depositing a bowl full of soup on the little table that Etta and Diana have set up in the middle of the office, “but you guys saved my life back there. Literally, in your case,” he directs to Diana, “so, you know—least I could do.” He gestures grandly towards the bowl, though Diana doesn’t really get much more out of it beyond some vague shapes even in her world on fire. “My grandpa’s old recipe, or as much of it as I could remember.”

“It smells delicious,” Diana assures him, and he gives a little chuckle as he sits down. His heart beats steadily in her ears, like a marching band. Already she can’t imagine listening to any other heartbeat for the rest of her life.

His rib, in her ears, sounds like old ships. In time it’ll heal. For now she hears him shifting a little in his seat.

“I do have to apologize, on Diana’s behalf,” says Etta, “since _we talked about this_ , Diana, _please_ get better armor, and also find better ways to break it to people that you run around in a mask every so often like a crusading superhero from a comic book.”

“It was pretty cool, though,” says Steve.

“Don’t encourage her!” huffs Etta. “Next employee we hire had better find out without, lord, nearly getting _stabbed_.”

Diana laughs, reaches over to brush her hand over Etta’s. “I’ll try,” she promises, then it sinks in: “Wait, we’re hiring Steve?”

“It’s not decided yet,” says Etta, with an air of importance. Hilarious, considering that they don’t have the money to even think of hiring anyone on, though—Diana will admit, being able to talk to Steve regularly sounds like a lovely idea.

“Yeah, like I said, I have no idea how to start to pay you guys back, so,” says Steve, “hi, can I be your new secretary? I have experience.”

“I don’t know, Etta,” says Diana, with a little grin, “we do have some rather exacting standards, don’t we?”

“Yes, and very high standards they are!” Etta sniffs. “For we are a very prestigious law firm—”

“I’ll work for free,” says Steve.

“You’re hired,” says Diana.

“Make more of this soup,” adds Etta, “and we’ll give you a raise straightaway.”

“An offer like that,” says Steve, and the sound of his voice is like a clear bell, like music, like the start of something new in Diana’s ears, “how can I refuse?”


End file.
